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How to map a location to a path in NGINX

vn flag
Mattia

I have an nginx setup where I need to map specific url paths to server paths. For example I need example.test/myapp/ to go to the following directory in the server: /apps/myapp/web

I tried adding the following location block:

location /myapp/
{
    root /apps/myapp/web;
}

but if I go to example.test/myapp/ or example.test/myapp I get a 404.

As far as I can tell according to the docs this location should capture anything with a path that starts with /myapp/ and it's the only location block in the server so there's no chance of conflict. Also I've tried changing the location to point to the root (i.e. location /) and it works fine so it's not a problem of the wrong server path or missing files. What am I missing?

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us flag
Tero Kilkanen

nginx resolves file paths by using following strategy:

  1. Use path from root directive
  2. Add URI from request after the directive.

Now, in your case:

  1. root is /apps/myapp/web.
  2. URI from example.test/myapp/ is /myapp/.

Therefore nginx looks up files in /apps/myapp/web/myapp/ directory for that request.

If you want that /myapp/ URI will get files from /apps/myapp/web/ directory, you need to use the alias directive:

location /myapp/ {
    alias /apps/myapp/web/;
}
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vn flag
Mattia
Thanks! Where I got turned around is with the example in the docs where they say: `location ~ \.(mp3|mp4) { root /www/media; }` will return all video files at `www/media`. So prefix locations append the URI but regular expression locations don't?
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us flag
Tero Kilkanen
Yes, regular expressions don't append the URI, because it is difficult to determine which part of the regular expression match should be appended.
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co flag
Ferrybig
@Mattia No, regex locations follow the same rule as normal location blocks, URL `/myapp/test.mp4`, root `/www/media` becomes `/www/media/myapp/test.mp4`
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vn flag
Mattia
using the alias results in returning 403s for everything. (I know it's not actually a permissions issue since I was able to server the files with other location blocks). It was fixed by adding a trailing slash to the alias: `alias /apps/myapp/web/`. Not sure why that is...
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us flag
Tero Kilkanen
Interesting. I don't use `alias` myself, so I didn't know it required slash at the end. Good that you figured it out, I updated my answer.
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